ts as for those of the church that he
wished to overcome his rival. Hilarion, convinced by these reasons, filled
with water an earthen vessel, from which he usually drank, and delivered
it to Italicus, who sprinkled with the water his horses, his chariots and
charioteers, his stables, and even the barriers of the racing ground. The
whole city was in a great excitement, the idolaters deriding the
Christians, who loudly expressed their confidence of victory. The signal
being given, the Christian's horses flew with an extreme rapidity, and
left those of his rival far behind. This miracle produced a very great
effect upon the spectators, and many persons, including the beaten party,
became converts to Christianity."

The above-mentioned work is filled with fables still more extravagant than
the one which I have related, and which entirely throw into the shade the
celebrated tales of Munchausen. Jerome complained that many people, whom,
in his Christian meekness, he calls _Scyllean dogs_, were laughing at the
stories related in those works, and which he begins by invoking the
assistance of the Holy Ghost. Was it then a wonder that a Christianity,
defended by such wretched superstitions, was frequently abandoned by
individuals, who, comparing the Christian legends of the kind quoted above
with the fictions of Pagan mythology, preferred the latter as being more
poetical? and, indeed, we have instances of the ridicule which the Pagans
attempted to throw upon Christianity, by comparing its saints with their
own gods and demigods.

I must, however, return once more to Vigilantius.(52) The Roman Catholic
historian of the church, Baronius, who calls him "_a horned beast, a fool,
and furious, who had reached the last degree of folly and fury_," &c.,
&c., maintains that his heresy was solemnly condemned by the Pope Innocent
I., whom the bishops of Gallia had addressed on this subject. He also says
that the same heresy produced terrible consequences; because two years
after Vigilantius had spread his doctrines, the Vandals and other
barbarians invaded Gallia, and destroyed all his adherents. Admitting even
with Baronius that Vigilantius was a damnable heretic, it cannot be denied
that this learned historian had a very strange notion of divine justice,
because the barbarians alluded to above destroyed a great number of
churches and relics, as well as those who prayed at their shrines, whilst
Vigilantius died quietly, and, notwithstandi